Oh, I'd actually never realised you could Alt+LMB to rotate the camera! I've always been using RMB, which works in those modes but not when you click on the mesh itself. I'll see what I can do about using Alt+LMB as well, having inputs eaten is really frustrating.

I'd like to add more material settings to the editor but that's going to take a while, it would be great to have full control over those properties inside Mesh Edit so I'll take a look.